align environment without any explicit alignments points (given by &) right justifies the equations in the block. They can be left justified by putting & at the beginning of each equation. Is there any way to left justify them without starting &-s? Maybe some special environment or option? It seems to be an extra work to tell the compiler again and again that I want left alignment on each line.
3 Answers
Left justification is the default (with fleqn) for the gather-environment. So simply use that, after all align is for aligning at user-specified points, which is not what you need.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[fleqn]{amsmath}
\begin{document}
\begin{gather*}
1-3=2 \\
34343234234-98394895835=239283
\end{gather*}
\end{document}
-
1That works great! When it comes to left alignment, everyone usually mentions [fleqn], but does not say it should be in combination with gather.– xivaxySep 19, 2013 at 16:14
If I understand the question correctly, you can use an array with one column with left alignment:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}
\[
\begin{array}{@{}l@{}}
1-3=2 \\
34343234234-98394895835=239283
\end{array}
\]
\end{document}
answered Sep 19, 2013 at 1:54
If you wish to have all your equations to be flush left, pass the [fleqn] option to amsmath, thereby pushing content to the left. Then patch \align@preamble in the following way:
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\align@preamble}{\hfil}{}{}{}
\makeatother
This removes the right-flushing \hfil from the preamble.
\documentclass[fleqn]{article}
\usepackage{amsmath,etoolbox}% http://ctan.org/pkg/{amsmath,etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\align@preamble}{\hfil}{}{}{}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\begin{align}
1-3=2 \\
34343234234-98394895835=239283
\end{align}
\end{document}
If you wish to have the content all the way flush with the left margin, add
\setlength{\mathindent}{0pt}
to your preamble as well.
alignenvironment flush left?fleqnoption nor in having the equation block flushed left.